Covered (Christmas Clothes #1)

Welcome to the first Sunday of Advent. Our series this year is called Christmas Clothes — which might suggest I am some sort of fashionista. I am not. I am a fashion simpleton. If I like it, I wear it. I do not follow trends and never wanted to design anything. I just want something decent to put on.

Maybe you are the same, and rarely think about clothes. Except you almost certainly think about them more than you realize. Every day you consider the weather, your schedule, what will be comfortable, what you actually like. There is more thought in it than you notice.

And I have bad news: Christmas makes it considerably worse.

Clothing Has Invaded This Holiday

Growing up, I might get a shirt or some socks at Christmas, but I never associated the two. Easter was the clothing holiday — a new shirt, a new tie, a new spring dress. Christmas was simply a beautiful winter holiday with family.

Now there is pressure to get it right. You need coordinated outfits for the family photo going into the Christmas letter. There are the matching pyjamas — and I have seen photographs where at least one family member looks thoroughly miserable about it. There are Santa hats and buffalo plaid. Some families dress up specially for Christmas Eve.

And that is just the normal end of it. There are the joke t-shirts — literally thousands upon thousands of holiday designs. You can now buy an entire Christmas suit. There are even Christmas shirts themed on science-fiction franchises, which I will not be wearing. I may not be a fashionista, but I have some taste.

And of course there are those strange churches that hold ugly sweater Sundays.

Clothing Is All Over the Bible

I recently realized I had never thought much about clothing in Scripture either — and it turns out to be everywhere.

Think of what you already know. Joseph and his coat, which we will come to in two weeks. The soldiers gambling over Jesus’ tunic while He hung on the cross. The night in Gethsemane when the soldiers grabbed a young man’s garment and he slipped out of it and ran off. Or Ephesians 6, where some translations say “put on” the armour of God and others say “clothe yourselves with” it.

Which makes sense. If you and I think about what to wear each day, of course ancient people thought about clothing too — though rarely what shall I wear today. They owned one, two, perhaps three garments. Their question was: when this wears out, will God provide another?

But there is something else about the clothing mentioned in Scripture. I believe many of these items point to a deeper reality — to faith, to Jesus, to the gospel. That is the point of this series.

So it makes sense to begin with the very first clothing God ever made.

One Rule

Genesis 1 gives the creation account in a form close to poetry — stars, land, water, the platypus, everything. Then chapter 2 restarts the account in narrative form, focusing on Adam and Eve.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” — Genesis 2:16–17 (ESV)

I have heard sceptics, non-Christians, and even a few Christians object to this as cruel. If God did not want them eating it, why plant it? Why dangle it in front of them? It looks like setting them up to fail.

But stop and consider what we call religion — the relationship between the divine and humanity. Think how many religions consist of rule upon rule upon rule that a person must keep to appease their god.

Here God gives one. Everything is yours; just not this. That does not sound cruel to me.

And the reason one command is sufficient is that the relationship was already perfect. God placed His image in this man and made him for relationship, and that relationship needed no scaffolding of rules. It was harmonious and complete.

Not only between God and man. When God creates Eve, that relationship is perfect too — which the last verse of the chapter signals: the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Their nakedness was a sign of innocence, purity, unity.

A perfect horizontal relationship between humans, and a perfect vertical relationship with God.

And Then Everything Changed

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. — Genesis 3:6–7 (ESV)

We have no idea how much time passed between chapter 2 and this moment. Centuries, years, hours — we simply do not know. What we know is that they were deceived, they ate, and the instant their teeth broke that skin they were plunged into sin.

Before the fruit, they walked with God. By verse 8, they are hiding from Him. Before, they were filled with joy and awe and wonder. After, with embarrassment, regret and shame. Before, their nakedness signified innocence. After, it signified shame.

Sit with that a moment. Imagine never having experienced regret. Never sadness. Never anger, not even at yourself. Imagine what those first emotions must have felt like.

And what do they do? They hide — from each other first, sewing fig leaves to cover themselves. And when that is not enough, they hide from God.

The way they try to cover their shame is with clothing.

Something Died That Day

God arrives and lays out the consequences: work will be hard, childbirth will be hard, marriage will be hard, life will be hard. And then He stops speaking and does something remarkable.

And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. — Genesis 3:21 (ESV)

God adds to His creative portfolio. He goes from making stars and starfish to making clothing.

But wait — were they not already clothed? They had fig leaves. Clearly God is saying those were not good enough.

Why? Go back to what He said in chapter 2: if you eat of it, you will die.

Some people conclude God was wrong, since they did not drop dead. But they did die. First, spiritually. God did not make Adam and Eve as animated sacks of bones — they bore His image, they had spirit and soul and personhood, and they were in living relationship with the Creator and sustainer of life. Now that was broken. You see it plainly in verse 8: instead of running to their loving Creator, they hide from Him. They are no longer spiritually alive in union with the giver of life.

That is why Paul writes to the Ephesians that we were dead in our sins and trespasses. Every human born since — except Christ — is born spiritually dead.

They also began to die physically. Not immediately, but the slow descent began. If you are in relationship with the sustainer of life, He can sustain you and you live. Break that relationship and you start dying. Eventually Adam and Eve did breathe their last, though they had been created to live forever.

But something did die physically that day.

“Garments of skins.” That does not mean they walked around as exposed muscle and tendon, frightening the wildlife. The word means animal hide. God clothed them in it.

So where did He get it? He killed an animal.

That is why fig leaves were not enough. The penalty for sin was pain and blood and death. You cannot pluck a few leaves and cover that over. Something had to die.

Justice and Mercy in One Act

God is a God of justice. When He says this is how it will be, that is how it will be. So justice was served.

And He is a God of mercy. He loves Adam and Eve — He loves you — and did not want them paying that penalty in that moment. So He allowed the penalty set for them to be transferred to an animal.

Consider how gracious that is. If anyone had the right to exact the penalty, God did. They bore His image. They were His creation. They disobeyed. And in mercy He lets them live.

He also clothes them rather than sending them out of the garden exposed. That is an act of love. And He does not send them out in fig leaves, which would never have lasted — the hides would.

But there is more. Those hides were a permanent reminder. Everywhere they went, every time they looked down, every morning they dressed — a reminder of their sin and of His mercy. Something died in my place, and I am covered by it.

Why This Is a Christmas Sermon

This whole story points to the cross.

Jesus did not come at Christmas so we could tell a charming story about a baby. He did not come so we would have an excuse to wear nice clothes, or decorate, or exchange presents, or hold a candlelight service.

He came to die.

Christmas is meaningless without Good Friday and Easter. Remove them and Christmas is just another day. What makes it a celebration is that Jesus went to a cross and died — and, like the animal in Genesis 3, He died in your place.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. — 2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV)

Sit with the first half. Jesus had no sin — and just as He took on human flesh, He took the sin of the world onto Himself, so that the wrath of God could fall completely and perfectly on sin, killing and defeating it, and you and I could go free.

Then the second half: so that we might become the righteousness of God.

If you follow Jesus — if you have put your faith in Him and made this story the centre of who you are — then you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Just as Adam and Eve were covered by the skin of what died for them, you are covered by the righteousness of the one who died for you.

Those are your true clothes. And they are not seasonal. This is what you wear every day, and it changes everything.

The Singlet of Righteousness

Last Friday I was at a robotics meet supporting my son, who is on the team, and my wife, who coaches it. But I could not entirely help myself — many of you know I lead a Bible study for the Wartburg wrestlers, and they had a home dual that night. So between robots I had the stream up on my phone.

One of those wrestlers is their 197-pounder. If he walked in here, you would notice he is actually a little shorter than me — and he weighs 197. The man is built. Earlier that week I watched him in the practice room simply dismantling a teammate. They are supposed to be going hard at each other, working takedowns, and it looked like me against a three-year-old. And the teammate is genuinely good.

But if you met him, he is mild-mannered, big smile, thoroughly nice. You would never guess. You would think: what a lovely big teddy bear.

Then he walked onto that mat, the whistle blew, and within moments his opponent was taken down and on his back. He won by technical fall — fifteen points or more — before the end of the first period. Total domination.

He puts on the singlet and becomes a competitor.

So many of us live our lives wearing fig leaves. We think we look presentable, and it is not enough. What you need to grasp is that God has put on you the singlet of righteousness. You are meant to wear it, and go out, and be different — because Christ has changed you. That is who you are called to be and how you are called to live.

Jesus is not meant to be a small add-on.

You have heard that clothes make the man. Jesus makes you. So go and live for Him, and let this be your reality, because He died for you.

Will You Accept His Covering?

If you do not follow Jesus, the invitation stands. He has already done everything needed. All He asks is that you surrender — that you humbly lay it down and recognize that He really did come as a baby, take on human flesh, live a sinless life, and go to the cross to die in your place. And what He offers you is His righteousness.

So this Christmas: will you accept His covering? Will you let that become your clothing?

Forgive us for the times we have behaved like Adam and Eve — working on the outside, reaching for our own fig leaves — when God wants to clothe us with something more substantial, more real, and more lasting.

No one forced Jesus to that cross. He laid His life down willingly so that He could take it up again. We do not have some historical figure to admire. We follow and worship a living Saviour.

At the core of who you are, if you follow Jesus, you are righteous. You are a saint. Now ask the Holy Spirit to empower you to live out that reality — not merely something we discuss on a Sunday morning, but something we live on Sunday afternoon. Not only something we think about while reading our Bibles, but something carried into work, and school, and our teams, and our clubs.

Because you are dressed. You are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.